Q. We are hoping to go to Rome in September for a long weekend. How easy would it be to extend the stay with a few days by the beach or in the countryside afterwards, to combine some culture with recharging the batteries? Claire Allard, Southampton

As the man charged with cleaning out the stables at the scandal-struck Vatican bank, Monsignor Battista Ricca will need Machiavellian cunning, good fortune and a whiter-than-white record to have even a fighting chance.

The director of the embattled Vatican bank and his deputy resigned on Monday following the latest developments in a broadening finance scandal that has already landed one Vatican monsignor into prison and added urgency to Pope Francis’ reform efforts.

Italy’s supreme court has declared that clues that implicated Amanda Knox in the killing of British student Meredith Kercher had been underestimated by the judges who quashed her conviction for the crime and freed her from prison in 2011.